I. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the impregnation of natural wood, or other combustible material with similar characteristics, with ignitable materials, and more particularly to a pressure treating process for penetrating and completely permeating a volume of pre-dried combustible material, such as kiln-dried wood, with a flammable liquid or blend such as liquid paraffin, in order to produce an efficient and effective fire starting material or combustion catalyst.
II. Prior Art and Other Considerations
There exists a growing need and demand for kindling material for use with wood burning stoves, fireplaces, campfires, outdoor grills and other similar applications. Presently, many suppliers of kindling are harvesting and processing naturally occurring, resin enriched, pine stumps for sale as kindling in order to meet this growing need and demand. An overabundance of pine resins within the wood of such stumps cause the wood to have very favorable characteristics for use as kindling, such as easy ignition and extended burn time, thereby making the wood an excellent kindler for fires of all kinds. Unfortunately, continued harvesting of these stumps has greatly depleted the reserves of this naturally occurring resource thereby creating a need for a suitable substitute which can approach or exceed the kindling characteristics of the naturally occurring pine resin kindling.
A number of commercial manufacturers or suppliers have attempted to imitate or reproduce the burn characteristics found in the natural pine resin kindling with substitutes such as sawdust blended and compressed with wax, natural wood immersed in wax, wood particle board coated with wax, pine cones dipped in wax, wax contained within a paper cup, and chemically treated charcoal briquettes. However, these products, while somewhat effective as combustion agents, do not approach the preferred burn characteristics found in naturally occurring pine resin kindling.